"Since the New Deal, American entitlements have consistently grown faster than projected in size, scope, and cost. Like unwanted houseguests, they cost money you don't have, and they can't be kicked out. Reform and repeal efforts are about as successful as kindergarten experiments with do-it-yourself haircuts. Indeed, the health care bill's very structure is a testament to this fact. Much of it is funded with changes designed to eliminate waste in Medicare and Medicaid-changes that could, or at least ought, to have been used to reform those programs, both of which are unsustainable. Yet the only way these changes were politically viable was if they were made in order to fund an all-new benefit...It's not just the cherry-picking of figures and the rhetorical deception, it's the country's overall fiscal future. Thanks to a spiraling deficit, the economy is chugging merrily towards a broken bridge over a rocky canyon-a fact that almost no one from either party is willing to do anything about. America, according to the CBO, is on an 'unsustainable' fiscal path, and the nation's solid-gold credit rating may be at risk. So it doesn't matter how many times blinkered legislators repeat to themselves, 'I think I can, I think I can': Nothing short of significant cutbacks to entitlement spending is going to magically transform the U.S. budget into the little engine that could. Instead, politicians are paying for new entitlements by shifting money from unsustainable programs-money that ought to have gone toward getting America's fiscal house in order. Democrats made history all right-but only by sacrificing the future." - Reason magazine's Peter SudermanSuderman: Half A Repeal Is No Repeal At AllRonald Bailey: What Health Care Will Look Like in 2020Reason.tv Video: Why Health Care Bill Won't Cut Deficit